I found this after the article below was published today.
Media Releases and Communiques
Standing Council on Health - Joint Communique - 11 November 2011
Australian Health Ministers met in Brisbane today and welcomed the passage of world-first legislation for plain packaging of tobacco products that passed in the Senate yesterday.
Ministers noted the historic legislation was yet another measure in a long history of tobacco-control measures over many decades taken by Commonwealth and State and Territory Governments.
Ministers also noted the legislation, combined with State and Territory efforts on tobacco control, would assist in achieving targets committed to by the Commonwealth and State and Territory Governments to reduce the adult daily smoking rate to 10 per cent by 2018, and halving the rate among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Ministers discussed and considered a range of issues, including:
- eHealth
- MyHospitals website
- food labelling
- rural and remote health
- aged care reform
- mental health reform
- health workforce.
The information is found here:
This is the article the prompted by search.
e-Health authority to live on
- by: Karen Dearne
- From: The Australian
- November 23, 2011
THE National e-Health Transition Authority will live on post-June 2012, with the federal and state governments agreeing to continue their joint funding arrangements for the time being.
NeHTA’s immediate future was decided at a meeting of the Standing Council on Health in Brisbane this month, although there is no commitment to a long-term role for the organisation.
No public announcement has been made and the level of funding is yet to be agreed.
Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon has been slow to commit to further funding for the e-health program beyond the launch of her personally controlled e-health record (PCEHR) system on July 1.
Forward budget allocations for e-health programs drop from $433 million in the current financial year to $35m annually in each of the next three years.
A spokesman for Ms Roxon yesterday said the health ministers were "continuing to consider" NEHTA’s future funding.
Taxpayers have spent more than $1 billion on NeHTA and related activities since the joint federal-state government corporation was established in 2004 by former health minister Tony Abbott.
Around $830m was spent on e-health in the six years to 2010, while NeHTA has received more than $200m in base funding and contracts for its 18-month implementation of the PCEHR.
NeHTA’s future has been uncertain as it awaited a Council of Australian Governments' decision to renew funding.
But a survey of state and territory health ministers by The Australian has revealed agreement was reached on November 11 at SCOH, a new COAG council that replaces the former Australian Health Ministers’ Conference.
Comments from many of the Health Ministers follow.
What is interesting are two things.
1. The Federal Health Minister is saying that ministers were “continuing to consider” NEHTA’s future funding.
This confirms what I have been hearing suggesting DoHA has put NEHTA’s funding on a month to month basis because of concerns about NEHTA’s delivery.
2. The comments from all the ministers suggest that the funding of the PCEHR and who contributes when and how much is still very much ‘up in the air’.
That there have not been clear press releases from anyone suggests to me there is still a way to go before finality in all this is reached.
Of course the total absence of any information at all in the communique is just a sick joke! Surely a couple of lines could have been provided on e-Health?
We are living in very strange times indeed!
David.
